


Minds, and Hearts

by brittlestars



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Heart-to-heart talks over coffee, Your daily reminder that Cisco Ramon is a hugely powerful metahuman just coming into his powers, casual use of superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 15:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14475504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlestars/pseuds/brittlestars
Summary: Cecile asks Cisco for help, one psychic to another. It hurts to be honest about the reality of their powers, but the journey to self-discovery doesn't have to be a lonely road.>> For mosylu, whose sensitive, caring Cisco greatly influenced my writing here.





	Minds, and Hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mosylu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/gifts).



“Cute Japanese monsters aside," Cecile said, turning away from Cisco to begin pacing, "people have a right to privacy in their own heads. How can I serve as a district attorney when I can read a defendant’s mind?"

Joe sighed. "I don't suppose that was covered in Professional Ethics 101."

"Of course not. There’s no precedent for this.”

 "Actually," Iris interrupted, "we do have a precedent for this sort of thing." She motioned to the side with her hand.

Everyone turned, one by one, to look at Cisco. After a few long seconds he gave up the pretense of fiddling with the components on his desk.

Pulling the lollipop from his mouth, he bent at the waist in a half-hearted bow. "Vibe, at your service?"

“Cisco, can you talk with Cecile about,” Joe began, hands flailing in a vague gesture between his own forehead and Cecile, then between Cisco and Cecile. Cisco arched an eyebrow. Joe’s hands dropped. “About psychic brain stuff?” he finished lamely.  

Cisco held back a heavy sigh. Getting words right, using the right names, mattered to him, but he knew Joe was trying his best. He stood and turned to smile at Cecile, trying to ignore the way Caitlin and Iris and Joe were watching him. “Coffee?” He offered.

“Please. I’m exhausted and it isn’t even noon.” She reached for Harry’s dampener, rolling it between her fingers before setting it back on her forehead. It glinted in the fluorescent light of the lab, alien and heavy and cool. She wound a scarf around her head, hiding the dampener under its folds, then straightened her back and offered her elbow to Cisco.

“Shall we?”

Cisco grinned, glancing at Joe for permission before taking Cecile by the arm and guiding her down the hall.

“Thank you, Cisco,” Joe said on their way out.

They took the slow way home, compared to Cisco's usual these days. He wasn’t sure she could handle the weirdness that was breach travel right now, and he wanted time to compose his thoughts. It had been a hot minute since he’d sat in a car and watched the scenery roll by. It felt… human.

Cecile pulled her car to the curb just before turning into the Wests’ neighborhood.

"I know you panicked back there,” she said. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

Cisco winced. “Pointless to try to hide around you, huh? I feel sorry for your kid.”

Cisco realized it was the wrong thing to say the second the words came out of his mouth, but there they were. _Way to set off on totally the wrong foot._

Cecile closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the car seat headrest. “I haven’t told Joanie yet. Joe’s been making excuses for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t keep living like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Cisco repeated.

Cecile cracked an eye at him.

Cisco was emphatic. “I am. This must suck for you.”

She pulled her hands from the wheel to half-turn in the seat to face him. “That’s it? No ‘it’ll get better’ speech? No 'you're a strong woman, you can handle it' pep talk? I thought you, of all people, would be babbling on about how awesome this is.”

“Do you want an ‘it’ll get better’ speech right now?” Cisco countered.

“Maybe? I don’t know.” Cecile hid her eyes by burying her face in a palm, fingers spread to her temples. “I have no idea what’s happening in my life.”

Cisco rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey, you don’t have to figure out your whole life today. Let’s get you home. I’ll make coffee and you can ask me all about ‘psychic brain stuff.’” Cecile smiled at Cisco’s simultaneous finger quotes and eye roll.

Cecile swiped the back of her hand across her eyes and nodded with the determination of someone trying to put a difficulty behind them. "Yea, okay." She started the car, checked the mirrors and blind spot, and pulled the car back out into the road. "While you're at it, maybe you can show me how to get the coffee machine to work."

"It broke again?"

"No, I just can't figure out how to work it since Joe brought it back from your workshop with twice as many buttons as it had before it broke."

"Maybe it could use an AI," Cisco mused, glancing sidelong at her.

"Please no," Cecile laughed, "it's bad enough that the timer has your voice. The last thing I need is for a machine to start offering roast and blend suggestions."

"Not a bad idea, actually." Cisco's voice was teasing but he was willing himself to ignore somber memories of HR.

Cecile kept up the small talk. Cisco recognized her empty cheerfulness as the sort of willful, plastered-on optimism he’d relied upon in his own past. He wondered if other people saw through him as easily as he saw through her.

Pulling into the driveway of Joe's house (now Cecile's as well, Cisco supposed), Cisco remembered once again how much he liked this place. His eyes drifted to the spring wreath on the front door, the well-maintained lawn, the worn-in welcome mat. Every detail felt warm and inviting, nothing like arriving at his parents' house.

"This house is bitchin'," he muttered under his breath.

"What's that?"

"Oh, nothing," Cisco smiled, shutting the car door.

A few minutes later they were seated at the small table by the window, steaming coffee mugs in hand. The late morning light streamed past the curtains, which were new, Cisco noted, and must have been Cecile's addition. It was pleasant and far too homey for what was probably going to be an uncomfortable conversation. Or maybe it was just homey enough.

"What's it like for you to," Cecile fumbled for words, "have visions?"

Cisco squeezed both hands around his mug, letting the heat seep into his fingers. The gesture felt grounding, and it kept from direct skin contact with the table. He pondered how best to begin. Talking about his abilities was uncomfortable even with his closest friends, and he hardly knew Cecile. With her being twenty years his senior, dispensing life advice was going to be awkward at best. Still, she was a friend, and she needed help of the kind only he was equipped to give.

Well, him or Gorilla Grodd. Between them, he could see how he was the more attractive option. At least he used a comb.

"Vibes," he commented idly, trying to gather his thoughts.

"Vibes. Right," Cecile corrected herself, making sure to use the right term but still not quite meeting his eyes. Her voice was low, quiet, resigned. She fiddled with her mug as well.

"You've probably already seen it from the outside," Cisco began, "though you might not have noticed. I go blank for a few seconds."

Cecile paused in thought, then shook her head: no.

Cisco sighed. "I suppose I have gotten pretty good at covering it up."

Cecile was quiet, letting Cisco take his time. She sipped her coffee.

"Vibing takes over all of my senses. It's like... being plunged underwater, but instead of water, it's a memory. Or a memory of the future." Cisco frowned. "And usually somebody else's memory instead of mine."

Cecile tried to keep her face intent, but her brow creased.

"You can't control it, can you?"

Cisco swallowed. "Cecile, I'm going to lay it out for you in a way that, honestly, I haven't done for anybody else."

"You don't have to."

He shook his head. "No, it's okay. Joe trusts you, I trust Joe. Besides," he winked, "I've got a good feeling about you." That was true, but mostly he was concerned for her mental health. If opening up about his powers could help her, soothe her distress, that was worth a little extra vulnerability.

Cisco mentally pulled together his stray thoughts.

"I had zero control at first. I would find myself in sudden vibes without warning, and it was bad. Really bad. I almost always saw destruction, or violence. So much pain, and with people or places I didn't recognize." He swallowed. "I've gotten a lot better at it - vibing, and all the rest - but it's still terrifying when I get caught off guard.”

He was looking at his hands around the coffee mug. He was willing his hands not to tremble.

“I wish I could tell you that it stops being hard, but every day I wake up and I don't know what I'm going to see, when it's going to take over." _I've died more times than I can count_ , he didn't add. _I could die again at any moment._

"Not exactly what I was hoping to hear."

"I know, and I'm sorry. I wish I could be the fun guy who shows you the ropes, a noble psychomaster with one simple trick to keep control of your own mind." Cisco frowned. "If there's a trick, I haven't found it. It doesn’t stop being hard, but I it does become more bearable. Or, at least, less alien."

"Wally never seemed to have this kind of trouble."

"Of course not, why would he?"

Cecile frowned.

“Barry and Wally,” Cisco explained, "their powers are mostly muscle. The action is voluntary. It’s different when something invades your head uninvited. Speedsters can choose not to run. We can't choose not to exist, not to be awake and aware."

"But--"

"No," Cisco said, firm. "Our situation is different, so don't compare yourself to them."

Cecile's eyes turned down. "I'm so tired."

Cisco exhaled heavily. "Yea. If it helps, I can recommend some relaxation techniques. And, when that fails, Caitlin has access to the best sleeping meds. She’ll hook you up."

"I'm not sure about that, with the baby..."

Cisco frowned. "Fair point." At least he wouldn't have to mention how the drugs might not work at all, how they made him fuzzy and unsteady and addicted without doing much to get him to sleep, even at higher doses than he'd admit to Cait.

"I've got a great aromatherapy pillow," he continued. "Lavender and peppermint with buckwheat filling. I added some massaging vibration."

"You mean with your powers or...?"

The question would have bothered him in the past, but not so much today. "Nah," he said breezily, "the tinkering skills are run-of-the-mill engineering genius." Except when they weren't. Cisco worried lately that he'd been low-key vibing information, designs, even physics expertise from other versions of himself across the multiverse. He didn't know what bothered him more: the idea that he could seriously mess up this Earth's timeline with the wrong knowledge or invention brought over too early or the idea that he couldn't actually tell if his mind was wandering around cherry-picking information from the brains of his dopplegangers on other planes of existence without his conscious effort or direction.

"Harry's been a help, with the dampener.” Cecile touched the shape on her forehead, a bump under the scarf wrap around her hair. “This small one, anyway. Thank you for helping him with that."

Cisco smiled, genuine. "My pleasure.”

"He said most of the work was you, actually."

"It was a joint effort," Cisco conceded. He sipped his coffee, then set down the mug, looking out the window into Joe's backyard. "It is scary, and it is tiring, but you don't have to go through this alone," he murmured. "Team Flash - they'll accept you and support you, no matter what." Cisco knew this firsthand.

"I'm not exactly part of the team."

"Hey - You send me a message and I'll come in a heartbeat. Faster than Barry."

Cecile's eyes went wide for a second and Cisco smirked, holding up a lazy hand to open a breach right there in Joe's kitchen. "I take shortcuts."

The wavering blue energy was mesmerizing, and eerily quiet. Cecile couldn't see through to the other side, but she thought she smelled the seashore.

Cisco dismissed the breach and let his hand fall.

"You're not using your goggles."

"Like I said: it gets better. You'll develop control. Doing that?" He gestured to where the portal had winked out of existence. "It used to terrify me. You'd be surprised how quickly things become routine. Even the bad guys of the week."

Cecile barked a single, short laugh. “Joe tried to warn me. After he told me about Wally and Barry he wouldn't agree to continue dating until I'd thought things over for a full week and we sat down to have another talk. And then I learned about time travel, and talking man-sharks, and sentient clouds of poison gas." Her voice was bitter in a way Cisco didn't associate with her.

"That must have been a lot to take in."

"I thought..." She paused, swallowed. Cisco was careful to ignore the tears shining in her eyes, "I thought at first 'I can handle this. I'm a DA, I know there are bad people out there. The only difference is that now some of them might have powers.' And I did handle it, even with Barry getting charged for murder. And Joe was so steady in the face of everything, the danger. But this..." she reached up, rubbing her temples and sniffling.

"It's different when it happens to you," Cisco said gently. He fished in his pocket for a handkerchief, neatly folded, and handed it to her, grateful he hadn't had a nosebleed yet today.

Cecile nodded, accepting the handkerchief with a steady hand. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes and the looked up at him. "Getting the voices, I thought - I thought I was going crazy. I don't know how you do this every day, Cisco. I am so scared."

Cisco reached out and tentatively laid a hand on the back of her hands. Cecile didn't miss the slight pause there, or how he visibly pushed through it. His skin was warm, certain. "We have to just keep living with it. This is the new normal - maybe, as Caitlin said, not forever. But for now. One day at a time."  

"You're so lighthearted all the time, talking about Pokémon and Star Wars and--" she waved her hands, gesturing at Cisco's whole person, "--whatever."

"Ha, yea. That's a defense mechanism."

Cecile raised an eyebrow, eyes dry but red.  

"It started in middle school, which was, categorically, the worst. I embraced the geek and wore it like armor. Fits me pretty well now."

Cecile nodded, "Yea, Joanie was like that too."

"Tell me about her."

"About Joanie?"

Cisco nodded.

"She's always had a strong sense of right and wrong."

"Like her mother."

"I suppose. You should have seen the tantrums she could throw as a kid, if she thought something was unfair. And, as she grew up, she didn’t mellow out so much as find direction. She’s putting that passion into social justice." Cecile was smiling, gaze turned inward. "Her father would be proud."

Cisco didn't know anything about Joanie's father, or where he was, or what circumstance had set him apart from Cecile. It sounded like he was no longer in Joanie's life, but he simply didn't know.

"Now she's off at college," Cecile continued, "trying to change the world."

"Do you miss her?"

"Some days, but not badly. We were never as close as she was with her dad. She's a good kid, though, and she calls me."

Cisco pitched his voice high. "'Mom, can I come do laundry this weekend?'"

Cecile laughed. "Yes. That, and just to say 'hi.'"

Cisco leaned in. "What's your favorite memory of Joanie?"

Cecile hummed into her coffee. "Probably her seventh birthday. We had a picnic, just the three of us. Ivan - her father - and I had just had an argument, but the weather was incredible and Joanie was so happy in her birthday dress and her laughter made the argument seem small and dumb. It was one of the last times we really felt like a family."

Cisco smiled. "You wanted to know how a vibe feels. I could show you, if you like?" he offered, opening his hands in a palm-up invite.

Cecile startled, shifting backward away from the table. _There it is,_ Cisco thought. He recognized the gesture as probably unconscious, but her half-masked fear still hurt.

Then her expression shifted, grew softer. "I-- We could go back to Joanie's birthday?"

Cisco nodded, keeping his hands still. He was used to people being afraid of him.

"Would it mess with my head even more?"

Cisco hadn't thought of that. "Probably not. I've brought others along before. Wally, Barry." He tried to ignore Cecile looking down at his hands with a mix of curiosity, reverence, and fear. "And Iris," he amended, giving a non-metahuman example for Cecile's sake. "But we don't have to if you don't want to."

"It sounds... invasive."

Cisco shook his head: no. "We'll stick to the picnic. And we can leave any time you want."

Cecile closed her eyes, considering. After a long moment, she opened them again and set aside her coffee mug. "Okay. What do I need to do?"

Cisco grinned. "I'll do most of the work. How about we sit somewhere more comfortable?" He gestured to the recliner in the living room. Cecile followed him there.

"I'm going to keep my hand on your shoulder, if that's okay."

Cecile nodded.

"Great. Now, just remember back to that day."

Cecile shut her eyes...

...and opened them again to a feeling of vertigo. She and Cisco were standing at the edge of a small park. She could somehow still feel the recliner behind her, her legs folded under her in the chair, but she was also standing. It made her a bit dizzy. Cisco held her shoulder, a steady, firm presence. He looked semi-transparent, ghostlike, and he was wearing different clothes. But he was grinning an earnest, giddy smile that said he was having the time of his life. "We're here!" He said, sweeping a hand out.

The sun was shining and the sky was clear. Cecile turned on the spot in a tight circle, trying to take it all in at once. Cisco trailed her. "It's just like I remember," she murmured, then stopped short. "But then where am I?"

"You’ll be along shortly," Cisco said. "We're not restricted to only what you experienced. Your memory was just a thread I used to get to the right place in time." Cisco felt his ears go red in embarrassment as Cecile stared at him. He shifted his grip on her shoulder, tried to squeeze reassuringly. Projecting their consciousnesses into the past, no big deal.

An ancient sedan, paint chipped and missing one rim, rolled up, saving Cisco the discomfort of trying to explain further. The car pulled into the first available spot. They watched a younger version of Cecile exit the car and open the back door to unleash a small, bouncy explosion of giggles and pale yellow tulle. Joanie’s hair was enormous, frizzy and out of control. Her dress was dotted with felt stars in rainbow colors. She squealed in delight, running to the park, where they saw a tall black man - Ivan, Cisco supposed - standing on the hill, shaking loose a checkered blanket in the shade of a spreading oak tree.

"Daddy!" Joanie called.

Ivan waved. "Happy birthday, baby girl!"

Cecile looked back and forth between her daughter, bounding up the hill, and her past self, moving to the trunk of the car.

"You can go wherever you'd like," Cisco said, "the connection's real strong. I'll follow."

Cecile took a slow step toward the hill, hesitating as if she were afraid she'd fall through the ground. When she'd didn't, she moved more quickly, eyes fixed on her daughter, who was helping her dad to arrange the corners of the blanket. When she and Cisco arrived, they stood off to one side, by the tree.

"Joanie, look," Ivan tapped a finger to the side of his head. Joanie's mouth fell open in a small, perfect O. She reached for him.

"You did it! With the stars and shapes and everything!"

"Just like you asked." Ivan scooped up his daughter and Joanie hugged her small arms around his neck. Then, she leaned back, touching his hair intently, tracing the shaved outlines along the sides and back of his head. After a moment her wide, brown eyes went to his face. Cisco's heart melted. What a cute kid.

"Dad, what's 'friv-lis' mean?"

"Frivolous? Where'd you hear that, hun?" Cisco heard Cecile suck in a breath. Her eyes were wide with surprise, and with shame.

"When mom was on the phone with you, in the car. She said your haircut was friv-lis."

Ivan's face fell. "She meant," he paused, then set Joanie down and kneeled to be at eye level with her. "She just didn't see why the stars are cool instead of silly. Mommy's worrying about law school right now, hun. Let's try to take it easy on her."

"Okay." Little Joanie nodded once, then again, more firmly. "I think it's cool. Not friv-lis, cool."

Ivan smiled. "Anything for you, baby doll. Now let's go help mom with the rest of the picnic stuff."

Father and daughter clasped hands and turned back down the hill toward past Cecile, who was unloading a basket from the trunk of the sedan. Cisco risked a glance at Cecile, to see if she wanted out of the vibe.

But Cecile was staring down the hill at the little family, gathered around their car. She sank to the ground, drawing up her knees to her chest, and watched. Cisco sat beside her, silent.

The picnic was actually a tea party. Ivan and Cecile took turns pouring real tea from a tiny teapot into tiny chinaware cups. Cisco could see that the saucers were chipped, but Joanie treated them with care, lecturing her parents on how to hold out a pinky finger when drinking. The cups were so small that the adults could only pinch the handles between two fingers, but they tried. Cecile was hugging her knees and smiling, watching her past self laugh, watching her past self watch Ivan as Ivan brushed Joanie's hair and told jokes.

Cisco didn't generally stay in vibes so long, but he couldn't bring himself to cut them off. Joanie’s laugh was pure and clear, like the ringing of a perfect bell, and the sound eased something deep inside him. Eventually the family started packing up the picnic items into the basket and Cecile turned to him and nodded. "Okay. Let's go back."

"Close your eyes," Cisco directed. It wasn't necessary, but he found it helped.

The next instant, Cecile felt the pull of vertigo again. Her eyes flew open and she grabbed the arms of the chair, gasping and dizzy. Her head whipped side to side and she blinked repeatedly, staring at her surroundings. Cisco was crouched next to her, arm held out to steady her, make sure she stayed upright in the recliner. "We're back at Joe's," he said, voice low and soft and calm. "Joe West's house."

Cecile paused, then shook her head as if to clear it. "Right. Of course."

Cisco let his hand drop and smiled. He sank to his knees on the floor. This was as good a place as any to rest for a second.

"Cisco, you're bleeding!

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He patted his pocket, searching for his handkerchief. Cecile ran to fetch it for him from the table. He took it gratefully, holding it to his nostrils. Cecile guided him up onto the couch, where he sank back into the cushions. "Thanks." At least he hadn't gone incorporeal again.

"Thank you, Cisco."

He gave her a thumbs up, the other hand holding the bloody handkerchief in place. His head was pounding. Still, it had been a good vibe. He was grateful for every good vibe he could get.

Cecile went back to the kitchen, grabbed their half-empty coffee mugs and returned to sit sideways on the couch, facing him.

He took his coffee mug wordlessly. They rested on the couch in silence for several minutes, Cecile trying to sort through her feelings and Cisco trying not to drift off. A sugary beverage always helped.

"I shouldn't have yelled at Ivan that morning," Cecile said. "He told me the haircut was for Joanie."

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Cisco admonished. "You were looking out for your family's welfare on a tight budget."

"But what if I had--"

"--Cecile, I was raised Catholic," Cisco pointed out. "I know guilt trips. And I know they aren't worth it. Joanie had a great seventh birthday, you saw that. She enjoyed spending time with you both. All that you learned just now was that she loved what her dad did for her."

Cecile narrowed her eyes at Cisco, but then huffed a sigh, throwing her hands in the air in a resigned half-shrug. "You're right, of course."

She paused a second, then cocked her head at him. "'Raised Catholic,'" she repeated. "And now?"

Cisco shrugged, folding and refolding the handkerchief carefully. His nose had stopped bleeding. "I'm not worried about some old, bearded white dude in a robe's opinion of me, if that's what you're asking." His voice fell quieter. "I figure, I'll do my best with what I got. Let the multiverse sort it all out when I'm dead. Or not, I don't care."

Cecile lingered on the word "multiverse." He used it so casually. But then, she figured, he did have a window into those other worlds. She wasn't sure where that put her and her family, cosmologically speaking. It was an uncomfortable thought where she'd once been so certain. What did faith really mean, when this man could see the future, when Barry could travel through time?

She'd talked with Joe about that very question a few times, and was surprised to hear the rocky relationship the man had with God. They'd decided to start going to Cecile's old church together once every few weeks. Neither of them really knew what the visits meant, but they agreed that, at a minimum, it was nice to have the distraction of a social circle their age.

"Cops and DAs, other people in law enforcement, we tend to have a streak of black humor a mile wide. EMTs too,” Cecile said, “But not Joe; he never really had the gallows humor. It's something I admire in him. He reminds me that, despite the criminals we have to deal with every day, there are good people out there, worth protecting.

"But then, when I started hearing thoughts, I heard Joe's nightmares. Scary, and loud. So, really, he's only steady on the outside." She sighed. "I still don't know how to talk to him about that. Or if I should. He hasn't come to me with it, so it's none of my business, right?"

Cisco swallowed back a comment on the nightmares that plagued him essentially every night. Today was about helping Cecile, not about revealing all of his hidden, personal ghosts. Instead, he said, "If Joanie were having nightmares, would you want someone to offer to talk with her about them?"

"Yes, of course.” She paused, then nodded. “Joe deserves that too. Even if he's trying to be tough on the outside, he’s clearly stressed."

"See? With or without mindreading, you'd do the same thing. Having powers doesn't have to change who you are, Cecile. It's part of you now, but it doesn't define you."

"You really believe that?"

Cisco swallowed, taken aback by her suddenly piercing eyes. He had to look down, resetting his hands around his mug. "I'm trying to."

"You are one incredible human being, Cisco."

He raised his mug at her, tilting it forward. She mimed him and they clinked the ceramic rims together. "Cheers."

He finished his coffee, cold but sweetened. The grit at the bottom tickled the back of his throat. He swallowed it down anyway. They both gazed out the window at the dogwood tree in full bloom. The wind ruffled the blossoms. A cardinal darted in the branches, a bright splash of red on cream.

Cecile reached up to rub her forehead, just below the dampener.

“Here, take that off.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Okay," Cisco agree readily. "You don’t have to. But one of the things that helped me, in the beginning, was to find a quiet place and just let myself… be. Experience things without fighting them. Maybe it won’t be so bad with only one other person in the room? Somebody who isn’t Joe?”

Cecile fell silent, considering.

"Tell you what: I'll just work on the Coffee Master 3000, give her a little upgrade."

"Cisco..."

"A little downgrade. No AI, I swear. The re-wiring will take most of my attention, fill my head with math and really boring, technical thoughts. You do you and take the dampener off when - if - you feel like it."

Cecile nodded stiffly. "That's fair. Maybe I'll read a book for a while, first."

"Cool." Cisco stood, taking the mugs and walking them to the kitchen counter. "I'll go get my tools."

With that, he raised his fist again to the center of the room, pulled open a breach through space, and walked through it.

Cecile stared after him. She hadn't stopped staring when he returned a minute later, a cardboard shoebox in his hands. Cecile recognized the brand; he had expensive taste in shoes.

Cisco smiled at her. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Cecile couldn't help but think of the brilliant blue-and-white behind him as an aura, a whole-body halo. He wore the breach like a second skin. As Cisco took a step forward, the portal folded in on itself, shrinking down to a point before it was gone.

Cecile stood and walked into the kitchen to wave her hand in the air where the breach had been. She felt nothing unusual. Except awe. "It's amazing."

Cisco - a real-life superhero in a Ghostbusters t-shirt and striped socks in her kitchen - shrugged, then turned to sling the box onto the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker. The tools inside clicked and clanged, metal on metal. He leaned forward on the tile countertop, sliding the coffee maker toward himself and cooing. "Come to papa, papa's gonna take care of you."

"I can't do what you do," Cecile blurted.

Cisco looked up, pushing a curtain of wavy hair behind his ear. "Okay," he said easily. "There's nothing you have to do, Cecile. Nobody's pushing you."

"How many lives have you saved? You and Wally? All of team Flash?"

Cisco closed his eyes for a second, grounding himself. Then, he set down the coffee maker and turned to face Cecile, leaning back against the countertop. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"We've endangered far more than we've ever saved. There's no glory in super-heroing. There's hardly any good in it."

"Wally and Barry are good," she countered. Cisco couldn't disagree.

Cecile continued, "they're cut out to be heroes. That's not who I am."

"Why'd you become a district attorney?"

"To help protect the public."

Cisco spread his hands wide. She had made his point for him. "Being a telepath doesn't change that."

"It does if I can't get back to work."

"Then let's practice."

Cecile threw her hands in the air. "Fine. I'll consider it. But first, I'm going to get lost in Stephen King for a bit. Don't set my kitchen on fire."

As she walked out of the room, Cisco called, "No promises."

Cecile turned back and their eyes met. They were both smiling.

"Oh, boo," Cisco said, pretending to pout. "You're boring."

"Boring is good. I like boring. I would be happy with boring for the rest of my life."

Cisco understood that feeling. "Aight. Get out of here. I'll see just how boring I can make this thing."

It was a perfectly lazy day. Cisco dismantled the coffee maker, carefully arranging the parts on the kitchen table. He itched to plan out more upgrades but, every time he reached for his design notebook, he remembered that it was a coffee maker, not a MechE PhD dissertation. Cecile wanted simple, and that was a different design parameter than he was used to working with. This thing didn't need to imprison a meta with unknown abilities, stop a god, or bluff a conman. It needed to brew coffee.

Cisco nodded to himself and set to work re-making the machine. Fiddling and fine-tuning was absorbing, relaxing. He lost track of time.

"Are those even real words?" Cecile asked abruptly. She was standing on the other side of the table.

Cisco startled, jerking back in his chair and half-raising his hands to a defensive position in front of his chest before catching himself. The screwdriver in his fist was too small to make a formidable weapon, and Cecile glanced at it with a wry grin. She wasn't wearing the dampener. She'd been listening to his inner engineering monologue.

"Well..." Cisco hedged, "sort of real words? Half of this tech," he swept a hand over the disarray of coffee maker guts, "is actually from Earth-2. Or Earth-19. Hasn't been invented here yet. So either I use the alternate Earth name, if it's a good name, or I come up with a word for it myself."

Apart from plans for the coffee maker, most of the rest of his thoughts had been a running commentary on all the terrible, cringe-worthy technobabble he could remember from TV shows and movies. Part of the point of the experiment had been to discover if Cecile was reading only surface thoughts or if she could detect simple subterfuge, such as focusing on one set of thoughts in an attempt to distract a mindreader from--

"--ulterior motives," Cecile said aloud.

Dammit. Cisco had forgotten she was still monitoring his thoughts.

Then he shrugged. Might as well take advantage of it. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in his chair, and thought directly at Cecile. _You're welcome in my head right now, Cecile_. He smiled to underline the point.

Cecile didn't quite smile back, but some of the tension drained from her face.

 _Intentional practice helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin with vibing_ \- the last word came with a jumbled rush of images and feelings and Cecile gasped.

Cisco leaned forward, reaching for her, suddenly full of concern, but she waved him off.

"It's fine, I'm fine." She swallowed. Then, squaring her shoulders, she looked him in the eye and nodded. "Keep going."

Warily, Cisco settled back into the chair. _The practice helped little by little. The more I understood about my abilities, the more comfortable I felt with them_. Cisco couldn't suppress the twinge of fear here, the unbidden memories of facing down Killer Frost and not fighting back, of choosing not to defend himself. With an effort, he re-directed his thoughts toward memories of practicing breaches and force blasts in the speed lab, of letting vibes wash over him at home in the dim light of his bedroom.

 _I'm a scientist by nature, so I experimented. I figured I could feel more in control if I discovered my limitations._ Here, deep sadness. Overwhelming melancholy. And something huge and hollow, endless...

"Enough!" Cecile gasped, snatching the dampener from the table with trembling fingers. As Cisco stared, his thoughts a mess of confusion, she toggled the on switch, affixed the dampener to her head, and stalked to the kitchen counter to snatch up her discarded headwrap. She re-wound the scarf over her hair in silence, her back to Cisco. Then she shuffled back over to the recliner and returned to her book. Cisco noticed that the scarf was wound around the edge of the dampener instead of over it. The device stood out like a shining jewel, like a crown on a noble brow.

He turned back to the Coffee Master 3001, screwdriver still in hand. He was confused, and curious, but determined to give Cecile her space. He began humming lightly.

Cisco had the coffee maker up and running again before Cecile returned to the kitchen, setting her book down beside the empty mugs.

She didn't miss the way Cisco's gaze darted to the dampener on her forehead before he asked, "You want more coffee? I was just about to do a test run."

"Sure," she accepted, walking over the mugs as an excuse to look into his face. He gave her a small, reassuring smile.

Cecile marveled at Cisco's emotional fortitude. How could he have been so vulnerable, so open to her intrusion, knowing he hid dark and uncertain thoughts like that? How could he be so calm now, knowing what she'd just seen? Cisco's armor indeed fit very well, she mused, and there was something profoundly sad about that.

The coffee brewed in record time - that was one of Cisco's improvements that Cecile fully agreed with - and soon their mugs were full again. They returned to their seats at the breakfast table. Cisco slid the window open a crack to let in the late afternoon breeze.

Cecile broke the silence first. "You weren't kidding, before."

Cisco raised an eyebrow, questioning.

"When you said you were scared."

"No," Cisco's voice was soft, "no, I wasn't."

"You'll find your powers' limitations someday. You've already found control."

Cisco froze in place. There it was, the root of his fear, laid bare in this woman's understanding.

In all of his testing - intentional or unprovoked - he never had found a limit to the vibing. Sure, there were headaches, nausea, insomnia. But elevated heart rate and chronic stress and erratic EEG readings were the faults of his frail body, not of his powers. If he was honest with himself - which he never was, but apparently Cecile had seen straight through that - he knew that the vibes were essentially limitless, a well of information at the scale of the multiverse. He could choke himself on the smallest fraction of the information he had access to. Better to restrict himself to an object in his hand, or to skin-to-skin contact, than to wander the fields and planes of his perception untethered.

Cecile was watching him. Fear and weariness were naked on his face. Suddenly, she missed Joe overwhelmingly. Joe would have known what to say to get Cisco's spirits back up, to reach this man with the heart of a boy. He needed love, guidance. She wondered where his parents were. She'd never been told much about Cisco's family, apart from caution not to ask him about them, especially not to ask about siblings. Were his parents dead, like Barry's? Had he seen them die? Or were they distant, having rejected him for being different? She didn't know which was worse.

And, despite how much her heart ached to give comfort, to protect Cisco, she didn't know how to be a mother to him. She tried to think of what she'd say to Joanie, if Joanie were going through this, if Joanie felt the fear and sadness that had flooded her when she listened in on Cisco. The thought made her cry.

"Hey, woah," Cisco said, reaching out. He fished for his handkerchief, but it was still sitting by the couch where he'd left it, ruined but neatly folded. He pulled Cecile into a hug instead. She went.

"It's okay," Cisco murmured into Cecile's hair.

Cecile squeezed him once, then leaned back out of the hug. She offered a hand to him, and he took it. Cecile’s handshake was firm as she made a promise to herself, and to Cisco: "We'll do this one day at a time, right?"

Cisco nodded. "One day at a time. Besides, having powers is not all bad." Here, he smiled, a genuine grin that rounded his cheeks and put a shine in his eyes. "I have never attended a better tea party than I did today. Thank you for sharing that with me."

"You know," Cecile mused, "hearing Joe hasn't all been nightmares."

"Oh?"

"I've heard how much he thinks of my Joanie, cares for her. How much he cares about Iris and Wally and Barry. And you too, Cisco. How much he loves me. How he still thinks about Francine and respects her memory, despite everything she put him through. I knew he had a great heart and I've loved him for a long time, but to get that feeling so directly, it reinforces every instinct that tells me he's the one."

She paused, coming to a realization. "He's my baby's father and that's everything I want in my life right now."

Cisco smiled. "I'll drink to that," he toasted. They clinked mugs again.

Things were still scary, Cisco thought, but at least they were a little less lonely.


End file.
